AKE – “We’d have deserved a better future” (video) [Threshold Premiere]

Threshold Magazine | Junho 21, 2019 10:08 am

AKE is one of those artists that can be described as a sonic artist – the different levels of dynamics that come into play in his music are almost dizzying, with plenty of seamlessly blended hard twists and turns scattered throughout his music. Manning a wealth of sequencers, synthesizers and effects, AKE creates his own soundscape, where ambient and glitch coexist in the same plane.

Elia created AKE as his creative alter ego, something external from him but with deep connections to himself, considering that AKE acts as a graphic acronym of his own name. In his creations, the key aspect is the tone, leaving melody, harmony and rhythm to the background. Through granular synthesis, synthetic melodies, samples, drones and acoustic sounds, tracks are assembled from different sources.

We’d have deserved a better future is in no way different and acts as a fine example of the creative process behind AKE. We’d have deserved a better future belongs to I remember the Trees, AKE’s first EP, which was released on May 24th. The music is hard to trace – considering what has been mentioned before, AKE is hard to trace to a single genre, and the heavy idiosyncratic focus on tone makes him a rare sight on the modern music landscape. The videoclip is a strange recollection – distorted videos of trees and plants are heavily processed into a glitchy ensemble of tricks while maintaining their familiarity. The most fascinating aspect is how it blends so well with the music as if they had always existed as one single item.